5.1 setup moved to new house

There appears to be tons of these questions on the forum, but I felt my specific one hadn't been answered yet

I have a budget/starting 5.1 HT setup which served us well when living in small-ish student housing, but we've moved to a little home which has a decent family room but with no way to mount speakers directly to the sides of the LP:

Samsung 42" model *mumble* LCD panel, situated ~eye level on a decorative entertainment cabinet.
Pioneer VSX-821-K reciever
LP is ~8'-10' from screen
MLT-1 5.1 peakers, FL,FR,SL,SR on stands, very slightly (6"?) below ear level (it's as high as they'll go!)
Center placed directly in front of screen, on entertainment cabinet,
FR & FL placed near corners of room angled in at LP (toe-in, right? I'm learning!) Roughly the same distance from LP as the Center
SR & SL placed near rear corners 3-4 feet behind LP, pointed at the LP

View of panel and idea of LP (and folded laundry, and wife's exercise stuff, man she'd kill me if she saw this)

View straight-on of panel, notice different corner depths.

Left wall from LP. Can't touch the rock (renting)

Right wall from LP.

Standing from panel, fuzzy picture of rear wall and both speakers. Notice the SL is basically IN the doorway and needs to be up on the back all above the door or on the side wall up higher.

I realized I didn't get a good shot of the SR corner, but it's less constrained than SL, with the exception of the slider being about 2-3 feet from the corner.


Now the problem(s) (or there may be problems in the current setup as well ):
1) We're getting a dog and having a kid.
2) Speaker stands have to go away.



The pregnant wife doesn't understand why I have an obsession with putting the front speakers at ear height on wall mounts. So, I'm debating about placing them up on the front wall, closer to the ceiling (~1' or less from the ceiling) and toed-in toward the LP and angled down so they're pointed directly at the LP.
Is this a good idea?

If so, where would I put the center speaker with this hypothetical setup? Should I aim to put it at the same horizontal level as the front L/R's (near ceiling) or should I try to keep it as close to the TV as possible (vertically) but within 2' vertically from the FL/FR's?

Also, I need better ideas about rear speaker placement. Aesthetically, I'm thinking side-wall mount, near to the same height as the FR/FL but should they be aimed at the LP in any way? I've read quite a bit about diffusion. Also, I may move to adding 2 more rears and upgrading to 7.1 in a few years, but let's pretend that's never going to happen and I want ideal audio placement for 80% movies 20% music and games.

One more condition: I'm doing this myself and I'm going to pull my speaker wire through the walls (I did it with Ethernet before, I can do it with this now) so doing some sort of dry run is going to be pretty difficult with one set of arms (I don't have 4/5 friends to hold speakers in approximate positions and see how it sounds, we just moved remember?). I guess that's not really a condition, but a consideration. I probably need to come up with a solid game plan, then install, and tweak to get the last bit of audio gold out.


I don't want to sacrifice my listening goodness to the hormones, but compromises must be made.


Thanks in advance!


I can post current setup/layout drawing later today if it's desired.

Oh yeah, my speaker wall mounts are totally custom ones I'm designing and 3d printing. They work great so far!
Edited by cmpete - 2/27/13 at 8:42am

Bump for pictures, thanks for the encouragement

That's what I was contemplating on the center placement.

I'm not sure on the direct radiating...(speaker n00b) do you mean layman's terms: directional? I believe MLT-1's are directional, therefore, continue to try and point at MLP?

Good idea on the OmniMount option. I'm basically creating my own OmniMount solution which is a bit stronger and more robust (hopefully) and less prone to coming loose. So, yeah it should be pretty easy to experiment a bit.

Okay, yes, the speakers are all direct radiating.
Ideas for better solutions which are better than this "not a horrible idea?"

Sorry. That's what I get for responding too quickly without refreshing.

That is a pretty decent idea on the rears. I'd mount on the back wall or side wall (or does it really matter?) back wall is easier.

I'll see what I can do on the center mounting above the TV...that's also a good idea worth floating by the wife.